It's just my belief, that games are best reviewed fresh. I don't mean right when they come out, I mean reviewing it during the timeframe of your first playthrough. Hindsight can very deceptive when you force yourself to go back to a game in order to review it. Think about the time that you played your first playthrough of what came to become your favourite game, or that 5 minutes into which you decided: "I shouldn't have rented this".
Needless to say, my first play was memorable enough that it warranted some immediate writing. So let's dive right into it.. actually, let's wait a few seconds to talk about how this game came to peak my interest:
It's one of those games, that you keep seeing in the used section (which to me, is my main point of purchase), and wonder "what is that?". The box is different, not Katamari different, but it looks like something 3DO would put together -- daring, but infeffective. I was on YouTube, big surprise, and once in a while, I run out of things to look up. Strange japanese words have a habit of sticking to my brain, and so I spat out BUJINGAI in the search box, of course omitting the trail of "IIIIIII"s that echoed through my brain. Didn't remember if Bujingai was someone's name, a move in a fighting game, or a variant of Bukkake.
The search result was feeble, but the little that I saw peaked my interest in a major way, especially since I have a weak spot, and can be disapointed by, Samurai Slashers. For the record, and if you look around, my most appreciated slashers are Dororo: Blood Will Tell, Onimusha Series and Genji. Likely, these are games that most would never consciously pick up, but one might direct your attention to the fact that Dynasty Warriors does not fall into my "played" repertoire. I'm quite picky about them, which means I ditched Samurai Western, bigtime. But the few videos that I saw for Bujingai, I really liked.
Despite this barage of name dropping, the game that this reminds me most of would be Shinobi for the PS2. Felt a bit like the same engines, and this is the PS2 Shinobi concept done right. While Shinobi didn't concentrate enough on Ninja Stars and favored swordplay, this adds to the similarity. In fact, I thought that I was in a Shinobi map when the game started.
SHINOBI LEVEL 1-B showing bland similarities
YouTube's video quality will not show you, that Bujingai's style is outstanding. I love playing older games to see what paths were walked first. The intro is a hard hitter, and while a lot of games such as Onimusha 3 will reel you in with an engaging introduction to wow you with an epic battle, this game opts for a surprise for the unsuspecting gamer.
So I pop in the game, and am a few 30 seconds after the usual hello my name is publisher, am invited to give the controls a try. I'm a big boy, and I'm sure someone will fade me in the news that the square button unleashes an automated 12 hit combo, or tell me that X is to jump, and.. did my character just say Hadoken? A few good whacks at the metal impaled zombie-demons, and I near my first gap-to-be-jumped, the screen fades to white, the monks chant and the jrock veil drapes my speakers as guitars scream hairspray murder. My character in the intro pulls off the same moves I just did, so I must have done wel... wait a minute. Then it hit me: this game offers players no two intro sequences that are the same, your no-training-wheels performance will be edited re-played to you with fading renders and staff credits. I'm in. I'm all in, this game's just made me a solid promise.
Strangely, though, this game seems to be a definite lookalike of Heavenly Sword in terms of color palette.. so now would be as good a time as any to speak about the protagonist. At first I wasn't sure why everyone on youtube were posting comments like "GACKT ^_^". You need to know a little bit about jrock, more specifically something called "Visual Kei". Now if you weren't already lost enough as a non-gamer, rest assured that Visual Kei has less to do with gaming, and much more to do with music. Luckily for me, I had come across Visual Kei when having gone astray on YouTube one day. I can't remember the name of the artist, but I do remember wondering if I was staring at a man or a woman, and if so, what is this person's sexual orientation and.. who digs this? Me, apparently. We'll leave the whole Visual Kei thing to the more curious of you who might be readying your Wikipedia search, or your back button.
The the fighting system.
The combo connections are solid, and can get quite tiresome if you're not willing to get creative. Slashing your way through this game will eventually get old, especially since there's not a great deal of enemy types. Remember, this is PS2003. You COULD slash through the game, but if you still care about this thing called "performance", you're gonna have to visually step up your game if you want to get a good style rating at the end of each level.
The game is fantastic. Not fantastic in the sense of "fabulous", fantastic in the sense of fantasy. At some times, you might end up asking yourself if you're actually in charge of the spectacular arial ballet that the game so cleverly chains together for you. The action is fluid, and while you might feel that this is far too easy and automated, you'll be smacked back to your senses and frantically trying to recover as you get your back scratched by slash after slash from an off camera giant mystical meat-cleaver wielding zombie slave dude. Let me clarify what I mean by automation, by telling you that the "counter" button, is your "attack" button, so really, it'll just be a question of making sure you panic while you're taking hits from the front, and will be duly retaliate in full-color.
There IS in fact a tutorial, not in the form of the stage, but in a would-you-like-to-learn-how-to kind of way, but by the time the game wanted to teach me stuff, I opted in favor of diving right in. Strangely, though, the tutorial is not interactive. The format is "here's how, but try it later". Perhaps in the end, it's better that way, because the controls and moves are not difficult to pull off, you'll do fine trying it on the battlefield as the bell curve for difficulty is not too too steep.
Most notable in this game is the use of gliding, and you do so with the grace of a female chinese ghost. Where most games would give you a double-jump to stick it to your foes from the bird's eye like Bloodrayne (ugh..), the second press of the button will have you dash-gliding with the wind. The motion is fluid and begs to be used, but the game won't be throwing you as many mandatory aerial battles as you'd like to witness.. you will, as you might have guessed, be using it to get around.
Unlike Shinobi, falling off a ledge while to eagerly administering a combo or flat out overshooting your majestic glide into oblivion, will simply cost you a drop of energy instead of an entire life. Oh yes, plenty of wall walking, and the controls for that one take some getting used to, as alternating between sticking to a wall, jumping and gliding can prove to be an exercise in precision that will only get unforgiving at the inevitable "jumping level". While I, with the masses, frown upon jumping levels in 3D games (I said 3D, like information superhighway..), this game might actually be the first to make it a forgiving foray. In fact, that's where I am right now.
[1 day passes]
The story is ambiguous, and as straightforward as any lost side scroller: you chase after boss, boss escapes, leaving beefier minion behind to deal with you, and disappearing into.. you guessed it: a portal. In fact, as furious as the boss battles might seem, the reward music is highly unbecoming. I'd go as far as saying that Alter Echo gave more of a sense of accomplishment to the ordeal. No weak spots to attack here, just constant pummeling that can go either way depending on how you've distributed your stats thus far. Let's talk about that.
Pac-Man lives on forever, from the glowing dots, to Mario's golden coins, to, well, whatever is left on the floor after your foes explode into a cloud of whatever you please. These glowing orbs of various value, will go towards your personal stat boosting fund. Stats are divided into 5 categories, and will max out at Level 3. The immediate effect of the stats will not always be obvious. For instance, maxing out your attack strength will yield more hits in your custom combo, but you really have to keep an eye out for those said hits. You'll know if you distributed properly or not, as a basic minion will eventually come to nearly kill you with a few hits (defense), or that you'll find yourself spending way too much time trying to dispatch even the most basic of enemies (hinderingly low attack strength).
The game as a whole ended up being quite solid, and I seldom have this complaint about games: it was too short. But it was well worth it, definitely.
I wish I would have purchased Bujingai back in the day, I'm sure I would have completely freaked out over it. Playing most Samurai slashers after God of War, is a really tough sell, but this game has actually held my attention pretty firmly.
Finished the game in two days, playing off-and-on during the day. Once I was done, I decided to look at the DVD extras, to find out that this was Taito's 50th anniversary game. The fact that this is not indicated prominently on the box, or that the game is uber-jay-pan, just shows that this game just a drop in a bucket when it comes to North American sales.
Weakest part of the game would be the cinematics, and while we can all be forgiving when it comes to gameplay graphics, rendered cutscenes should ALWAYS be breathtaking, either in motion, or in renderring. This game, I found, excelled at none of these factors. Furthermore: I. LOVE. ENDING. SEQUENCES. The gaming industry is taking it upon themselves to find some hip-hop music and slapping them on the closing credits, but really, what happened to the 10 minute reward while I nurse my blisters? Especially when it's somebody's 50th birthday.
If you're into PS2 Samurai Slashers, you must play Bujingai. This game is going to stay here with me, and I'm certainly up for clearing it entirely.
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